The joint parliamentary committees continued in yesterday’s session, chaired by the vice president of parliament Elias Bou Saab, in the presence of the finance minister of the interim government, Youssef Al-Khalil, to discuss the bill on “capital control”.
After the session, Bou Saab underlined that “the discussion was profound and there are data that have changed since the beginning of the discussion of the project and the imposition of a new fait accompli, for example, the new money was one thing and is have become something else, so everyone has started to resort to fresh money and we are forced to take account of the changes and especially modify the requested exemptions.
He added: “We have limited overseas transfers to matters related to external medicine (hospital operations that cannot be performed in Lebanon) and the problem of students enrolled in universities outside Lebanon. We also don’t want to deprive students inside Lebanon of getting their money. There is one item that we have not yet reached, and it is related to withdrawals to benefit from home medicine and education, and the mechanism and the ceilings will be studied in a rational way after we get the realistic numbers, so that the banks will not be in able to exploit the money transfer law for students abroad, for example, to smuggle money.
And he stressed the need to approve “capital control” to preserve equality regarding the rights of depositors, adding: “We do not accept that it becomes a” hierarchy”. There are issues dealt with by “Capital Control”. We asked to study other laws and restructure banks before submitting them to the general meeting.There is a general understanding that we have a clear picture of all these laws.
In response to a question about the cap on withdrawals, he said: “We set out to come up with realistic numbers. We agree that there will be a specific cap on withdrawals. As regards the powers of the commission, we have approved them in article three, and there are matters that require the approval of the Council of Ministers, and we have linked them to the budget and the laws that will arrive in Parliament. We are working to ensure strict control over trading mechanisms.
And he underlined the work “to preserve bank deposits and their value”, indicating “an injustice practiced by the banks towards citizens”. The money of the banker, depositors will also go. And our direction is not to give any bank a patent tool, and we tell them I took the recipients’ money and “God forgive the past” and start over.
